Episode 13: Consonant Harmony
Linguitect
You've heard of vowel harmony, now get ready for consonant harmony! In this episode, Rowan explains how consonant harmony is realized across different languages, and we take a dip into featural and autosegmental phonology.
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Episode 12: Ergativity
Linguitect
In this episode, Matt and Rowan talk about all sorts of ergative phenomena, and how to use them for conlanging. We will cite our sources by section they are first relevant towards, and also length.
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Episode 11: Sketches
Linguitect
In this mini-episode, Matt and Rowan talk about how to explore ideas in conlanging through sketches. Resources:
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Episode 10: Standard Average European
Linguitect
Join Rowan and Matt as they discuss the Standard Average European sprachbund (SAE). This is a language area that is centered mostly on Western European Romance and Germanic languages (think, French and German), but some features of it extend much farther into the Caucasus Mountains, etc. Haspelmath's formulation of the sprachbund can be found in this paper: A summary of that paper, intended for conlangers: Wikipedia for the overlapping (or subset, depending on definition) Balkan Sprachbund: WALS chapter on Haspelmath's feature 12, intensive vs. reflexive pronouns: WALS chapter on...
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Episode 9: Sandhi School
Linguitect
Today, Matt and Rowan talk about every sort of flavor in the ice cream Sandhi bar (ow! Rowan! that hurts!)
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Episode 8: Non-Default Case Marking
Linguitect
This episode has Matt and Rowan talking about case marking, a way to indicate what each noun is doing in the sentence. Specifically, what Matt refers to as "non-default case marking" - parts of languages where cases behave in ways that don't fit with their canonical uses in the rest of the language. Paper mentioned: Many of the examples are from Ergativity by R.M.W. Dixon
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Episode 7: Pitch Accent
Linguitect
In this episode, Rowan and Matt talk about pitch accent! We cover controversies in the definition of pitch accent and the wide variety of systems that have been called "pitch accent." References from this episode: Hulst, Harry van der, and Norval Smith. 2010. Autosegmental Studies on Pitch Accent. . Hyman, Larry M. "How (not) to do phonological typology: the case of pitch-accent." Language Sciences 31, no. 2-3 (2009): 213-238. Evans, Jonathan P. "Is there a Himalayan tone typology?." Senri Ethnological Studies (2009). Ding, Picus Sizhi. "The pitch accent system of Niuwozi Prinmi."...
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Episode 6: Accusativity
Linguitect
In this episode, Matt and Rowan discuss "accusativity" - the organizing idea behind many languages' syntax. It's very widespread, in languages as diverse as English, Swahili, Latin, Arabic, and Korean, but in a later episode, we'll go over other organizing principles as well. Matt discusses some history, theory, and examples of phenomena that occur in these "nominative-accusative languages." Resources discussed in this episode: - - contains an overview of semantic domains and gender in Russian
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Episode 5: Sprachbunds
Linguitect
Join Rowan, Matt, and Liam as they talk about sprachbunds - areas where most or all of the languages share certain features through contact.
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Episode 4: Conceptual Metaphor
Linguitect
Join Matt and Rowan in talking about conceptual metaphor - a framework for some really fascinating semantics References for this episode: Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, Lakoff "The semantics of gender in Bininj Gun-Wok" in by Greville G. Corbett, WALS Online
info_outlineToday, Matt and Rowan talk about every sort of flavor in the ice cream Sandhi bar (ow! Rowan! that hurts!)
Sandhi is an umbrella term for phonological processes that occur at boundaries - between words (external sandhi, like in Sanskrit vowel blending) or within a word between morphemes (internal sandhi, like in Latin assimilation)
It can occur between two vowels (Sanskrit vowel blending, Latin elision, English intrusive R), between two consonants (Latin assimilation), between vowels and consonants together (French and Korean liaison, English linking R), between two tones (Mandarin tone sandhi), a weird mix of tones and syllable boundaries (Soyaltepec Mazatec tone sandhi), or even between two tones depending on consonants in between (Taiwanese Hokkien tone sandhi)
References:
Beal, Heather D. "The segments and tones of Soyaltepec Mazatec." (2012). <https://rc.library.uta.edu/uta-ir/handle/10106/9539>